by Eric Chaet
1.
When I feel unusually oppressed by those whose powers are exerted at me, tho not especially at me, I contemplate becoming the most powerful person, in a position to allocate resources as I see fit, & with the power to compel others’ cooperation, or, at least, compliance.
But, then, I realize that I would be as incompetent, & threatened by anyone & everyone who would resent my power over them & inability to save them from any & all grief, as I am now incompetent to do everything for myself, rather than accept what benefits I can (refusing if it is at the cost of the integrity of my development), from those who have arrogated to themselves the allocation or withholding of resources & respect.
I need some respect & some of those resources! But some, tho the resources would be useful & the respect comforting — & nearly everyone finds them necessary — I can go on without.
2.
Those who have decided to take whatever they can from whoever is weaker or less shrewd, will do so to the person who would change the world forever for better — as much as they take from anyone who can’t prevent them, from weakness, or from being less shrewd.
Almost everyone who would change the world forever for better hasn’t comprehended his or her or humanity’s situation. That person would be virtuous, maybe, but isn’t virtuous — at least not yet. Almost all normal expectations will be a challenge to that person, until he or she actually becomes virtuous, or gives it up as folly.
The person who comprehends him or her self & situation, & becomes virtuous, doesn’t start virtuous. He or she starts taking cues from everyone among whom he or she matures. He or she wants joy, & would avoid grief, like every other living being.
Virtue is rare.
Almost everyone will decide that they must work with those who have taken & are taking whatever they can from whoever can’t prevent it, rather than with the person imagining he or she is virtuous, or gradually managing to become virtuous — who seems to be an idiot — lest they fail to thrive.
Virtue — especially wisdom, the great executive virtue — is the way to true success in life — according to Socrates, whose main success was communicating the idea, in the midst of the defense mechanisms & incredulity of proud, venal, & conventional “free” citizens.
Otherwise, he led a life of, mainly, deprivation & humiliation, til, at the end, it was redeemed by the accusations & death sentence of his fellow free citizens — & his brilliant speech in self-defense, summarizing how he had led his life — witnessed by just enough youths, including Plato — so that he realized his idea was immortally planted.
If anyone ever laughed last (so, laughing best) he was that laugher — impudently arguing to his accusers, that, rather than execute him for “corrupting the youth of Athens,” they should feed him for free, for the rest of his days, for his great & unique service, irritating them out of their errors.
Since you have to die, it is glorious to die triumphantly, no?
Wisdom, per Socrates, is to comprehend what is virtuous, which leads, inevitably, to intending to behave virtuously — because that leads to the greatest possible benefits — tho not likely the lesser benefits nearly everyone of your time & place will be pursuing.
3.
Best, it seems to me, also to take into account, & act strategically in relation to what others believe, are doing, have already set into motion, hope to do, & fear to do — & what, so far, you, too, keep doing despite the results being other than what you were hoping for.
Skills (including habits of strategic thinking) must be acquired & perseveringly applied to one’s particular cosmic, natural, social, economic, & technological situation.
Machiavelli says, truly, I think, what the rare individual who will behave virtuously must comprehend, if he or she would be effective (with some luck), rather than a martyr:
“…[T]here may be a line of conduct having the appearance of virtue, to follow which would be his ruin, and…another course having the appearance of vice, by following which, safety and well-being are secured…. [M]en will always grow rogues on your hands, unless they find themselves under necessity to be honest.”
Every society, to some extent, & in some ways, is built on injustices. Many were & are perpetrators & martyrs. Examples: the conquest & domination of western & eastern Europeans by Norsemen & Germanic lords; the conquest & domination of the Middle East & North Africa by Arabs; African slavery & ethnic cleansing of native tribes of America; exploitation by industrial capitalists of those whose means of livelihood had become obsolete, or who were dispossessed of traditional access to land they depended on — as in Ireland & India, Manchester, Pittsburgh, Chicago; the henchmen & victims of Genghis Khan, Timur, the Aztecs, the Incas, Stalin, Hitler.
Those alive now are among the owner-beneficiaries; the dominated contenders (“consumers” & competitors for better food & housing, & for pleasures); the administered & administrators; the defeated.
Those who are thriving are unlikely to relish considering how they are beneficiaries of injustices that are punishing the relatively & absolutely innocent.
Few contending to win — or lose — have the patience to postpone actions they hope will immediately improve their positions, however little they have been able to improve the situation that way so far — or to think thru mis-aimed resentments — or to do more than attempt to gain a relatively secure, if not delightful, position in the unjust situation.
The dispossessed, if they haven’t succumbed to terminal surrender, often sell themselves as slaves for subsistence — wages that only pay for extending misery.
Virtues subordinate to wisdom, per Socrates, are temperance, courage, justice, & piety — which I take to be correct evaluation of one’s limitations & powers til right now, to put one’s hopes & intentions into effect.
It seems to me that if you are unwilling to face the trouble you are in, you can only get out of it by very unlikely luck. That to make progress, you will probably have to tolerate a great deal of anxiety, realizing the trouble you are in, & the obstacles to emerging from it, & to creating a more virtuous situation — & realize how you will have to change how you have been thinking & behaving, so far.
Those whose expectations you will be emerging out of, won’t be pleased with you. You won’t get paid for it. People with a lot & people with almost no power will punish you, if they notice what you are doing with yourself.
4.
Gandhi’s satyagraha might be defined as resolute non-cooperation with that which is unethical; insistence & reliance on truth; non-violent self-realization; love contesting for power with that which is done for (apparent) gain at the expense of whoever who can’t prevent it.
Mohandas Gandhi, I have read, led small groups, at first, non-violently demonstrating against continued British rule of India. Gandhi was often in jail.
Non-violent demonstrations have become fairly common — for instance, in the demonstrations for civil rights for Blacks in the USA — Gandhi was an, or the inspiration — & for all sorts of sensible & not-so-sensible reasons, since. But when Gandhi began leading them, they were surprising.
Eventually, a lot of people joined him. A lot of minds changed, & behavior. The British administrators & enforcers left India — almost certainly long before they would have otherwise — probably with a lot less bloodshed — tho there was plenty of blood shed between Hindus & Moslems upon Independence, & there is likely to be plenty more between the now approximately normally belligerent (& Hindu-centric) nation of India & its normally belligerent neighbors.
Gandhi wrote about what he did in his book, My Experiment With Truth.
Non-violent demonstrations, being common now, are neither surprising, nor anywhere near so effective. It’s a hard thing — that what worked previously & inspirationally, can’t be expected to be equally effective, once it’s a common tactic.
5.
On the basis of wise virtue-willing, & all the effort I am capable of (but not a bit more, whatever anyone assumes or imagines), I shall be — I declare that I am — an intentional, irreversible, world-changing enterprise.
How much power I shall manage to develop & find ways to apply, I don’t know. I’ve already lived a long time, as human lives go, & haven’t much, in the way of virtuous, world-changing results, to be proud of, to show for it.
I believe I have changed myself for the better, & am applying myself. That launching is always the first step, & rarely enough taken. Still, launching isn’t arriving, & even arriving isn’t changing the situation when & where you arrive — for the better, sustainably.
How virtuous my aims & tactics will be remain to be seen — if I don’t fail, utterly, to get them into effect! — surrendering to dismay.
6.
There is power in seizing from others what they can’t prevent your seizing. It is power without virtue, tho — unwise. It is compulsive. It is not freely chosen. It is certainly better, tho, to eat than to be eaten. There is no virtue in being eaten. And one who is eaten is in no position to do anything virtuous.
But the greatest power is to avoid being eaten at least long enough to change one’s own, & other’s situation, too, for the better — that is, beyond either eating or being eaten, beyond the satisfaction of compulsions, to freely chosen virtuous action & results — tho very nearly no-one will acknowledge you are engaging in them, or, if they do acknowledge it, they will behave as tho you are a fool for doing so. But what do they know?
People who act compulsively, when they achieve positions of leadership, as they frequently do, generally have extraordinary successes early in their period of leadership — unconstrained as they are by what constrains those who find it best to subordinate themselves & to compete for acclaim & resources in harmless competitions. Then, generally, comes catastrophe for the leader & those led. I leave it to you to consider the “great leaders” of history. I don’t want just to engage in historical analysis, that you are capable of doing for yourself, if you have studied any history, & are incapable of grasping, anyway, if you have not — unless you have, yourself, lived thru, & survived such a situation.
7.
What those who (to some extent) govern can & should do with their polities is one thing; what an individual who is able (to some extent) to control him or her self can & should do is another.
Governments seem incapable of doing anything but making minor, brief improvements, whether for everyone or, more usually, for some at the expense of others — or of creating, or contributing to, minor or great problems.
What an individual should do, if capable, & what a government should do, if capable, aren’t the same thing.
This is so whether or not the individual is part of a government. A person who is a president, legislator, or judge — or a citizen — is, after all, a person.
Most of the time, a virtuous individual must work as hard even to avoid being made part of madness & injustice & their consequences, while somehow surviving, & realizing her or his potential — rather than succumbing to “common sense,” coercion, frustration, & despair — as those who achieve & hold on to hegemony, by taking what no one can prevent their taking, & doling out privileges & benefits to those who will loyally support them, in conspiracy against those who aren’t in on the deal.
Individuals, noticed by some public or not, can, if they mobilize themselves, per virtue, do rare deeds in the midst of the most common — however terrible — normal circumstances, that change things for the better, in small or great ways. Probably — that’s all I dare say — we are the beneficiaries of such deeds, as well as the victims of evil deeds. Probably we can mobilize ourselves in ways that nearly no-one believes possible, that weren’t possible for us, before we made more & more focused efforts to comprehend our situations & enable ourselves.
Virtue won’t pretend, for others or for one’s self, that it is changing the world forever for better — but it will attempt to change it so — & it will keep attempting as much as anyone struggling to emerge from illness, or to emerge from desperate poverty, or for wealth far beyond thriving, or for power over others — until it succeeds, or can’t struggle any more.
Virtuous struggle, when you are being driven back into ineffectiveness, yet again, is terrible. But struggle when you are making progress, when you have momentum, is thrilling. I can only imagine how joyful comprehensive success would be, from the thrill of truly experiencing progress toward & using virtue.
8.
It took some time for me to see what people meant by the constellation Orion, & then it took some time for me to distinguish the belt of the constellation, Orion. I have seen the stars that compose the belt of the constellation, Orion — or, rather, I have seen them as they were a thousand & more years ago, for that’s how long it takes for the light to reach my eyes. Just in time, too, because my eyes are dimming, now.
Likewise, it has taken more than two thousand years for the news of the life of Socrates, & what he said, more or less, according to Plato, writing after his death, to reach me. And it has taken me years to realize how important & how different from so much else I’ve read or heard about similar matters, & to, at least, begin to use them to organize my ideas regarding how I should behave, when I can control how I behave, & toward what end.
It’s not as tho I believe that, presto!, I can transform how humanity behaves, & therefore resolve all the conflicts of history, that are unresolved, & that make life so much more difficult & formidable than if only cosmic & biological forces were at play. But, with the years, I gain more confidence, that, despite all the time I spend feeling overwhelmed, lost, defeated, I have managed to make something more of myself than the pathetic being I previously was, & that, likewise, my efforts might contribute to the same thing happening for unjust, unwise, insane humanity. But I suppose it will take a great deal of time.
I must not be rushed by how most people measure time, & how they tend only to believe in what can be gained or achieved nearly immediately. I must survive, now, to do what I must do beyond the moment. But I must not sacrifice what I must do, if my life is to be worth living, in order to survive in the moment, or in the few brief moments that follow. I must be prepared to go on, tho what I have begun has not yet begun producing streams of benefits & returning streams of satisfactions — in the midst of the usual frustrations, & of unusual catastrophes I survive mainly or even only by luck.
[April 26, 2024: I’m still working on “Politics One Person at a Time.”]
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Virtue & Prowess 